Mississippi US Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith speaks to supporters after a runoff was declared between Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy.
Sarah Warnock, Clarion Ledger

Lamar White Jr. tweeted a short video clip of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith joking about being on the front row of a public hanging in Tupelo, Mississippi, on November 11, 2018.(Photo: Lamar White Jr./Twitter)

A small crowd in Tupelo, Mississippi, laughed after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith joked about sitting on the front row of a public hanging in a viral video published Sunday on Twitter.

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row," Hyde-Smith said in an embrace with a Tupelo cattle rancher, Colin Hutchinson on Nov. 2, while surrounded by supporters holding Hyde-Smith campaign signs, the video shows.

Lamar White Jr., the publisher of The Bayou Brief in Louisiana, posted the 10-second video clip on his public Twitter account. It's been viewed more than 700,000 times and has thousands of retweets.

White said on Twitter that Hutchinson had just finished praising Hyde-Smith when she made the comment.

"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row"- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her.

Hyde-Smith is in a runoff with Mike Espy, for Mississippi's Senate seat that previously held by former Senator Thad Cochran, who retired on April 1 for health reasons. Hyde-Smith was appointed to replace Cochran by the state's Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.

"Cindy Hyde-Smith's comments are reprehensible," Espy spokesman Danny Blanton said in an email. "They have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country. We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state."

Hyde-Smith called the controversy "ridiculous"

"In a comment on Nov. 2, I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement. In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous," she said in an email.

The runoff election is scheduled for Nov. 27.

People on Twitter had a lot to say about the video. Some who decried the comment voiced support for Espy, who is African-American, Many thought Hyde-Smith's comment in poor taste, given Mississippi's history of racial oppression.

NAACP president Derrick Johnson called Hyde-Smith’s remark "shameful" and said it shows "once again how Trump has created a social and political climate that normalizes hateful and racist rhetoric."

"Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ in a state known for its violent and terroristic history toward African Americans, is sick," Johnson said in a statement. "To envision this brutal and degenerate type of frame during a time when Black people, Jewish People and immigrants are still being targeted for violence by White nationalists and racists is hateful and hurtful."

Stumping in Mississippi which has the highest number of “recorded” lynchings of black people, Cindy Hyde-Smith says she’d be in the front row of a public hanging. Folks like Cindy don’t think or care about being implicitly or explicitly racist. https://t.co/zWjS6w19eg